Where do you go first for news today? Not to the mainstream media. It’s all happening first in the Twitter world, the Facebook world, Blogs, Youtube, and many other “social media” worlds. Blogging merges into news, and “blog” sites become news sites, for example ENENews.com – Energy News , http://enformable.com/ andhttp://nowarnow.wordpress.com/These, and other websites harvest information, often from “dry” “academic” sources – and present them in a more news-digestible form.

Investigative journalism is still the core of true nuclear news. But investigative journalists are up against the climate of financial stress in the mainstream media. Where a non profit blogger can quickly slap up a blog, investigative journalism takes great time and effort – and these true journalists must make a living. Independent investigative journalists are thin on the ground – very hard to spend the time, the effort, the fact checking, without an income.

This is the dilemma of nuclear news reporting today. Occasionally now, the true disastrous state of the world’s nuclear peril IS revealed by a mainstream media journalist.

But, government and corporate pressures mean that this is not generally to be tolerated in mainstream news media.

This is a pity – because mainstream journalists do carry a certain professional credibility and accountability.

But for the present, we all have to rely on those very modern, and freer, sources, of new and social media – and be vigilant in assessing their credibility.

The downside of “social media” – ONLINE ASTROTURFING. Using paid writers, and now more often bots – computer generated fake identities, corporations and goverments can churn out “comments” on websites, especially pro nuclear comments.

Do not be fooled by the pro nuclear hype from Kevin Scarce. Here’s an example. Check these two news stories:

Canada’s $6b nuclear industry a role model for Aust says royal commissioner “…..According to the royal commissioner investigating a possible nuclear industry for South Australia, Kevin Scarce, an Australian nuclear industry can be “future-proofed” against the potentially massive changes coming to the energy sector…….He says Canada is the best role model for Australia